Since Wolters Kluwer was founded, serving customers has been central to our strategy. We provide information that professionals find of value. In the past, when access to information was the critical need for our customers, we required that they subscribe to or buy content from sources that we owned and controlled. It was crucial that our customers had the relevant information at hand in order to be able to make informed decisions, comply with regulations, or work on a timely legal problem to serve clients. We served that crucial need for 155 years in the form of ‘top down’ distribution, selling our expertise to customers in a one-way flow of information. Read further >

Traditional publishers say that their traditional subscription-based businesses are in decline. So why did Apple and Google announce the start of their subscription-based businesses? And Tien Tzuo (CEO of Zuora, a subscription-billing company based in Silicon Valley) even stated that “we are seeing a larger shift to a subscription economy that means a lot not just for publishers but for all companies.” Customers are subscribing to software, cars, computing power, and computer storage. This is all about tightening the relationships with customers and creating an ongoing stream of revenues for these companies. Read further >

Matt Shatz – Head of Strategic Content Relations at Nokia – recently published an article on the future of publishers in the book business. While he painted an overall pessimistic outlook on publishers’ future, I found one remarkable statement: the need for publishers to “develop tight relationships with tastemakers of the digital world.” Read further >

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